The Little Nigar | |
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Cake Walk | |
Piano music by Claude Debussy | |
Other name | The Little Negro / Le petit nègre |
Key | C major |
Catalogue |
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Composed | 1909 | ?
Published |
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The Little Nigar (CD 122, L. 114) is the original title by composer Claude Debussy for a short piece for piano, composed in 1909 for a piano method and published the same year. It was later also published as a single piece, entitled The Little Negro and Le petit nègre. In more recent times, the piece has also been published under the title Le petit noir (The Little Black).[ citation needed]
Debussy composed The Little Nigar (giving the noun this spelling) [1] in 1909 [2] on a commission from Théodore Lack, for his piano method Méthode de Piano. [3] [4] The subtitle describes it as a cakewalk. [3] It is reminiscent of Golliwogg's Cakewalk from his Children's Corner, a piano suite that he had composed a year earlier. [5]
Debussy regularly
sought exotic influences. In The Little Nigar, he alluded to
banjo chords and drums,
[6] influenced by American
minstrel shows.
[4] The piece, marked allegro, begins with a first
theme presenting "jazzy"
syncopes in 2
4 time, in the then popular
ragtime style.
[7] It is followed by a lyrical passage, marked espressivo and pianissimo (very softly), which leads to a return of the first section. The first theme leans towards
pentatonic and is accompanied by a
chromatic
sequence of broken
minor thirds.
[8]
The Little Nigar was first published in 1909 by Éditions Alphonse Leduc in Paris as part of Lack's piano method and again as a single piece in about 1934, now with an added repetition and entitled The Little Negro, with subtitle Le petit nègre. [3] [2]
Debussy also used the piece's main theme in his 1913 ballet for children, La boîte à joujoux, in which it characterises an English soldier. [6] [5]
Numerous transcriptions have been made of the piece, including an arrangement for woodwinds that has been used for advertising Purina One dog food. [9]